Toiletries are the donation shelters run out of first and food drives forget entirely. Soap, deodorant, toothpaste, and period products are not covered by food assistance, cannot be bought with SNAP, and cost real money every month. A drawer of unopened hotel bottles or a multipack of tampons bought on the wrong cycle is exactly what these programs ask for. This page covers who takes what, and the single rule that governs all of it.
Every shelter needs list includes toiletries near the top, and the specifics are consistent: full-size and travel-size soap, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste and toothbrushes, razors, lotion, and period products, all new and sealed. Day centers serving people who are unsheltered want travel sizes, because a person carrying everything they own cannot carry a family-size bottle. Shelters can also use unopened hotel toiletries in quantity, which is the answer to the drawer of tiny bottles. Call for hours and drop at the donation door.
I Support the Girls collects and distributes bras, underwear, and menstrual products to people experiencing homelessness, through affiliates across the country and a mail-in program. It accepts any brand, quantity, or size of menstrual products as long as each is individually sealed, including new sealed menstrual cups, and non-expired sealed toiletries such as shampoo, soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, and body wash. Bras may be new or gently used in good condition; underwear must be new with tags or in packaging. Its site lists local affiliates and the current mailing address for the national program.
The Alliance for Period Supplies is the national network of community organizations that collect, warehouse, and distribute menstrual products, in the same way diaper banks handle diapers. Its allied programs are the right destination for a case of pads or tampons, and many run drives at schools and workplaces. Find the nearest through its allied programs directory, or call 211, which the Alliance points to for local referrals. Products must be sealed; open boxes cannot be redistributed even if every item inside is individually wrapped.
Some cities have a hygiene bank on the diaper bank model, Simply the Basics being one, that supplies personal care products to the organizations serving homeless and low-income residents. Local period programs such as The Period Collective in Chicago supply shelters, schools, and food banks. These programs take quantity and prefer full cases; a hygiene bank is where a workplace drive should go, while a single bag of products is better delivered straight to a shelter.
School nurses and counselors keep period products and deodorant for students who cannot afford them, and rarely have a budget line for it. Food pantries increasingly stock toiletries because their clients ask for them. Domestic violence shelters receive women and children who arrived with nothing and need everything on this page in the first hour; they take donations through an office rather than at the residence, and their needs lists are specific. See where to donate clothes for the homeless and women's shelters for how to reach one.
Last updated September 2026. Errors: [email protected]
Food assistance covers food. It does not cover soap, toothpaste, razors, deodorant, or period products, and a household choosing between those and groceries chooses groceries. The result is that shelters and pantries see constant demand for items no government program supplies and no food drive collects. Period products are the sharpest case: a monthly cost with no substitute, and one that keeps students out of school when it is not met. A single donation of sealed products fills a hole that nothing else fills.
A shelter hands a product to a stranger and cannot inspect what is inside a bottle or a wrapper. Sealed means the recipient gets what the label says, unopened by anyone. It is the same logic that governs donated formula and medicine, applied to a bar of soap, and it is why the hotel bottles in your drawer are welcome and the half-used ones are not.